I had the opportunity to be on Dirk Thompson’s WTVN show “The Radio Deli” yesterday afternoon. The appearance idea came at me so fast that I didn’t get a chance to promote it (partly because my aggressive e-mail filter snagged Dirk’s first message to me — zheesh).

The topics were Thursday’s about-face immigration cloture votes of George Voinovich and Sherrod Brown, and their weak explanations (Voinovich; Brown) for their switches from Tuesday’s and earlier votes.

I’ll link to a podcast when it’s up.

During the show, Dirk brought up a must-be-known point about Voinovich’s vote that he posted at his now-blogrolled blog on Thursday (also true of Brown, to be noted below; original coverage is at Hot Air, whose post really should be read in full):

Forty members voted during the alphabetical roll. Note that fully six of them switched â€” and only five switches total were needed to kill the bill. The other fencesitters must have noticed, sensed the momentum, and recalibrated their own votes accordingly.

….. (after) the 40th no vote, which doomed the bill ….. Everyone ….. knew it was dead (assuming theyâ€™d been keeping count), which makes the late switchers like Coleman, McConnell, and especially Voinovich switchers of convenience, not conviction. Why vote yes on a bill that you know is going to lose?

Very, very weak, but apparently in-character move by George, who was final “no” vote number 53.

Oh ….. and Sherrod Brown was no better (see Hot Air, again), and in a very real sense worse. As “no” vote number 50, he also didn’t get his vote on the record until the bill was already down in flames. Again — convenience, not conviction.

Principled liberals (assuming the term is valid) should be every bit as outraged, if not more, at Brown’s abandonment of his long-time immigration-related positions as conservatives are at Voinovich’s transparent join-the-crowd vote. So, as I asked yesterday, while Voinovich’s feet have been held to the fire, where’s the outrage on the Left over Brown?

What a marvelous pair of opportunistic and apparently core-belief-free senators Ohioans have elected.

3 Comments

This seems par for the course in all our elected officials and representatives. I hate to be pessimistic, but this is the sort of thing that makes people turn their backs on the whole system and give up exercising their voting privileges. It is just so discouraging to see this all the time….

#1, One of these days we’re going to make the connection that our senators are so out of touch because the direct election of senators in the 17th amendment, combined with their ability to raise mountains of money from out-of-state interests (i.e., not the people who vote for them), enable that behavior.

Unless you can prohibit ALL contributions from individuals who aren’t citizens of a given state (doubtful, and the dimwit courts will probably say it’s unconstitutional), Senators should be selected by state legislatures, as they were until the 17th Amendment was ratified.

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